Principles of Management

Ian Graham's Blog on Operations & Innovation.

4 Characteristics

Synopsis

Creative innovation requires a broad range of expertise. Lockheed’s “skunk works” is described as an early example of the creation of a specialist division bringing together a broad range of expertise. This approach is followed through Xerox PARC to the current interest in Google’s work organisation.

Objectives

Understand that where the NSI literature emphasises the structural resources and constraints supporting innovation and entrepreneurship, the creativity literature focuses on the individual originator and developer of new ideas or small groups of innovators;

Be able to contrast Mode 1 and Mode 2 knowledge;

Be able to describe how creative innovation requires diverse actors to co-operate;

Be able to describe how a project model of multidisciplinary innovation emerged;

Be able to describe the Google model of allowing all employees time to innovate.

Be able to think critically whether this model will become universal and what organisational factors facilitate innovation.

Dr Ian Graham

Senior Lecturer in Operations Management at the University of Edinburgh Business School, Edinburgh, Scotland. This blog supports his teaching in operations management, innovation and quality management and provides background on his research in the sociology of standards and the management of operational risk.